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Operating System Specific Discussions => Other Operating Systems => Topic started by: runequester on November 13, 2010, 03:30:26 AM
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Whether 8 bit or the ST and its offshoots ?
When I got my amiga (late 92) atari had all but disappeared from stores where I grew up (Denmark). Never knew anyone who had one, never saw them in stores, nothing.
So a few years ago when I read about this rival to the amiga, I got curious, and I've been researching them quite a bit.
Anyone had one?
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I still have an Atari 65xe, and dare admit I allways wanted to get an Atari Falcon!
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Whether 8 bit or the ST and its offshoots ?
When I got my amiga (late 92) atari had all but disappeared from stores where I grew up (Denmark). Never knew anyone who had one, never saw them in stores, nothing.
So a few years ago when I read about this rival to the amiga, I got curious, and I've been researching them quite a bit.
Anyone had one?
No, I have an Atari 2600 (still), and had (much later) an Atari Lynx, but it just stopped working one day...
My first computer was a Commodore 64C, then I jumped to an Amiga 2000 in 1989 or so.
The Amiga was better for me, better OS, better chipset, so I didn't pay much attention to Atari computers.
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Like most middle class suburban white kids in the US who grew up in the 80's, we had a 2600.
I briefly owned an Atari 800XL. About all I did with it was work on a game in BASIC that went no-where, and play Defender (cartridge). Man I must've run up millions of points playing that.
Sold it after a few months (the 800XL).
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I have an 800XL with a 1050 disk drive, a modem, and the 1010 program recorder.
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Never owned one myself, kinda knew one person who claimed to own one back in the early 90's, he was a kid who used to follow all us amiga users around the software stores on a Saturday (back when we used to have lots of Amiga soft/hardware stores), he was always going on about how the Atari had better sound than the Amiga, bit of a strange kid really, but that's the closest I've got to an Atari. :)
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I had a 800, 800XL, and a 400 for a while, with all the external drives and stuff. I even started & ran a user group for years. But when the 16 bit machines came out, the Amiga looked better to me so I jumped ship and handed off the group to the ST folk.
There's a lot of similarity between the 8bit Atari machines and the Amiga, more than just the hardware - designed by the same folks.
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no never had one but didnt get home computer till quite late my best friend had amstad 128 always wanted one of those love game socerry
apprently they where best for music because had in build midi port connect to electronic keyboard appently musician fatboy slim still uses his atrai for composing music with
best friend had atrai st showed me it had os n the rom thought that was cool
looked alot more pc looking to me a had 720 kb floppy disks
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Never owned one myself, kinda knew one person who claimed to own one back in the early 90's, he was a kid who used to follow all us amiga users around the software stores on a Saturday (back when we used to have lots of Amiga soft/hardware stores), he was always going on about how the Atari had better sound than the Amiga, bit of a strange kid really, but that's the closest I've got to an Atari. :)
if thats strange kid was fatboy slim quick cange your story u might get some cash hehe
say where did that cool kid go .... hehe
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2600 if consoles count. I've had Atari computers in my possession before, but never used them.
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I never had one back in the day, but I got an STe, TT and Falcon in last two years just out of curiousity. I have to say I am severely disappointed, especially for the lack of software, and lack of information and organisation (no aminet,) it just takes too much time to set up these babies which I dont have atm ...
I tried to stir up some folks at atari-forums for something like classic workbench equivalent for the Atari, they didnt get idea unfortunately ...
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Atari? If you asked such a question in an Amiga forum in 1990 you probably would have been accused of trolling. I knew people who had Ataris. STs were usually bougt by the parents, because they wanted to do word processing, or expected their offspring to become like Kasparov (who was in the ADs). We knew that the ST had great midi-software, but none of my friends used them for that and they also didn´t own a color monitor.
A cousin of mine had an Atari 800XL and while it was not much different to a C64 it always felt like a cheap "me too"-product to me - made for people who mainly wanted to play games. In fact I don´t know of any serious application or programming package even today, but I guess this is just my ignorance.
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Just an 2600 and a bagful of broken joysticks; probably 50 cartridges.
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I only ever knew one person in who owned an atari st back in the day. We'd often do the amiga vs. st thing at school, but it was mostly in good fun as he was pretty willing to admit he'd have preferred an amiga. Even though he was pretty honest about the differences in the machines he swore that Super Hang On was faster on the ST, which is something I should check one day.
Ironically I never played any ST software until I ran StonX on amithlon/os3.9 about 6 or 7 years ago. Was fun to see what I was "competeing" against all those years ago.
After being used to the amiga versions of much of the software I looked at you really "feel" the use of the amigas custom chips. Even things like sound (which incidently is awful) could sometimes slow things down onscreen on the ST vs. Amiga. Games that were little more than ST ports in particular are a good showcase of this as when static they look the same.
Anyway, it was interesting to check out what the "other side" was using back in the day, but it mostly re-enforced I'd made the right choice back then :-)
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I didn't used to - but I do now. I actually have a 1MB upgraded 520ST (that's the original 1984 one with no disk drive, no TV modulator, nothing!), a 1040STfm or 2 and a Falcon 030.
Funny this is that Atari suffered the same problem as CBM did at the time - Atari would keep throwing upgrades at the users, but the software developers always stuck to the baseline as that was what sold the most.
The STe was a much better machine, and had a blitter, better palette and much better sound. Hardly anything used it.
The Falcon was better than a 1200, in hardware. Still, nothing used it. I remember when the Falcon was coming out Amiga users were pretty worried that their computer wasn't as good as an Atari any more. In 1992 PCs were still predominantly machines that went ping and had up to 16 colours while needing a mortgage to buy. VGA was there but very expensive. It was all Atari vs Amiga.
I miss those days *sniff*, at least the ST had character. It's kind of like in the 60s everyone arguing who's better: The Beatles or The 'Stones? Then a few decades later it's Leona bloomin' Lewis (that's her real full name, by the way, honest) spat out of the Cowell machine who's topping the charts.
Oops, looks like I got side-tracked. Must be getting old...
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Even now i still feel like i would drop dead only by touching an Atari ST (the Amiga-Atari war was taken rather seriously in France :D).
However, i kinda like the Atari Falcon, perhaps because there is no more ST wording on it, but i don't own it.
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I had a bunch of 8 bits and a 520ST. Didn't like any of them.
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I bought a Mega ST in the 90ies for Cubase. I still have it, plus a few more (1040, Lynx, a Portfolio and also a 2600). There were a few really excellent programs for the ST, but overall the hardware itself and it's OS is rather crappy IMHO.
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I had an Atari 2600 clone as a kid but never owned anything else Atari until a few years ago when a flat mate of mine told me his work was throwing out an Amiga. He couldn't tell me what kind but I turned up at his work to pick it up.
It turned out to be an Atari 1040 with 4Megs of ram, the monochrome monitor and the cubase cartridge but no software. I thought what the heck, I have always been interested in what was so great about the Atari after a few of the typical playground arguments and took it home to play with.
Games seemed OK. Some were on par with the AMiga versions, some worse some better. I also liked the fact that it had the RAM expansion on the motherboard which took normal, for the time, RAM which I felt the Amiga could have always dealt with. From what I could see, cubase looked pretty good as well and I can see how this application helped to sell a number of Atari units.
As for their desktop GUI, GEM, I personally found that to be a major let down. 3 screen modes, the 2 lower res ones supported colour, the high res one black and white. The only way I could access all of them without a special monitor was to have the monochrome monitor plugged into the monitor port and a TV set into the RF port. I found the GEM interface pretty bad to use and work with, it reminded me of early MacOS and it's single tasking.
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I never had an Atari back in the days but i bought an Atari Falcon 030 last year, havent had time to play with it so its for sale if anyone wants it (no silly bids).
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Bought a STe for a tenner about 10 years ago at a car boot sale for a laugh.
Couldnt believe how shite TOS was. (Though the diskless loading was impressive)
IIRC the game Doodlebug had a 'ST mode' where the GFX were downgraded appropriately lol.
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I traded in my C64 and speccy, and used my christmas money to get a brand spanking new STFM.
It was the first time I started using a computer as a computer, and not just as a game console, so i'll thank Atari for that. But I bought it because it was £100 cheaper than the Amiga, and came with a massive pack of games, but it was the Amiga I wanted, but could not strech to.
A year odd later, I sold the ST and managed to buy a second hand A500, and never looked back.
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Yes and no. My family had a VCS (2600) early in my youth, and it was our only electronic entertainment for years. My mom brought home an early model A2000 from one of her business trips when I was 6, and we stuck with Amigas for over 10 years. I never knew any kids my age who had an ST series Atari... but then again, I also didn't know any other kids who had an Amiga, or even a Mac. In America of the late '80s, playing video games meant you had a Nintendo, and using a computer already meant an IBM clone.
It wasn't until I was packing up for college that one of my high-school buddies mentioned his family was selling his old ST. By that time, both sides had lost the "war," and I was curious what the old nemesis competitor had to offer. So, for $100 I picked up a 520STfm with a boatload of floppies and began my journey into vintage computer collecting. (A few months later I bought a VIC-20, then a Mac Plus... At my worst, I've had nearly 100 computers in various stages of repair... That's still my only Atari, though.)
I wasn't terribly impressed. The midget SC1224 screen was tiny. GEM looked even cheesier than AmigaDOS 1.2 (who picked out that color of green? and is that cursor a bumblebee?). And the games I played were not as enjoyable as the ones I still played on my Amiga at the time.
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I had a 2600 and 5200 which I still have today.
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Before the Amiga 1000 was affordable I was given an STM (no built in drive, but had a TV modulator built in) as a birthday present, at my own request....16 colours was a bit limiting for computer art and Commodore mouse was OTT in price like £50 and another £50+ for GEOS I think, 25% the value of an ST which had mouse and GEM included!
I got it specifically because I didn't have 1250+VAT to spend on a computer for doodling on otherwise would have got an A1000, and the ST was the next best machine really. Then when all the idiots were offloading their 1000s when news of the A500 emerged I got one of those too for a good price.
Technically Paula/Copper/Blitter were light years ahead of Atari Shifter graphics/YM sound chip though, but it didn't matter as maybe only 5% used anything like the full power of Amiga, ST ports from the nobhead software houses in the UK charging £5 make me sick, I have no problem with the actual ST machine which at one point was £299 compared to £499+£20 modulator for A500. Pays your money and you get what you pay for.
I understand why some people hate the ST though, as if the ST didn't exist Amiga games might have been programmed properly, Amiga games should have looked similar to Sharp X68000 games NOT bloody ST games :)
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A cousin of mine had an Atari 800XL and while it was not much different to a C64 it always felt like a cheap "me too"-product to me - made for people who mainly wanted to play games. In fact I don´t know of any serious application or programming package even today, but I guess this is just my ignorance.
The 8 bit machines did have some serious software... at least as much as I can remember that far back... ;-) The usual word processing stuff... if you can imagine writing on a 40 column screen. Koala pad for drawing... Printshop for signs & banners... there was even a 3d animator, but i don't recall the name of that one... I even wrote a label maker that got some play among user groups.
As for languages, well Basic came with it, either as a cart, or built into it. There was a 6502 assembler - in a cart no less! and a unique language called Action! that was sort of a cross between C and assembly. Those were just the ones I used.
Hardware wise the cpu was 70% faster than the 64 and it's serial peripheral bus was much faster. I always considered the 64 to be the 8 bit version of the ST. ;-) But then after making the original decision back in 1980 or so to go Atari, I never paid much attention to doings in the Commodore camp until the Amiga made the scene.
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Atari? If you asked such a question in an Amiga forum in 1990 you probably would have been accused of trolling.
Probably? :laughing:
Time passes and all these computers are so far removed from relevant the old feuds look silly. If I had the money and the spaced, I'd have a computer museum with all the old platforms.
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owned an STe for 3 months after finding one at a garage sale last year..ended up selling it to a true Atari fan because I honestly never had the will to learn/toy with it.....my 64/ 128/ A500/ A1200 rule my retro heart after all:afro:
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I never owned one, but these days I find myself intrigued by the idea of a Falcon+CT60 or one of those Hades compatibles :)
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@JimS
How can we forget "Computer Eyes" for the 8bit?
#6
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Whether 8 bit or the ST and its offshoots ?
When I got my amiga (late 92) atari had all but disappeared from stores where I grew up (Denmark). Never knew anyone who had one, never saw them in stores, nothing.
So a few years ago when I read about this rival to the amiga, I got curious, and I've been researching them quite a bit.
Anyone had one?
A friend of mine had an atari st.
After playing stuntcar racer on his atari i sneered my ass off of the crappy graphics... and i never considered an atari after that.
All though the atari had 16bit sound. music making was not of my interest as a gamer...
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I only had an Atari Portfolio, some of my friends had one too.
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I've owned and used early every Atari product ever made, including all of the various 8-bit computers and some of the 16-bitters. Tried getting back into 'em within the last couple of years in fact, but just couldn't. Even had the SIO2PC device, which was brilliant - but compared to other computers of the past which I still use (Commodore and TI mainly), the Atari stuff just isn't as compelling. I will say though, there's some really cool stuff going on homebrew wise out of Poland for the A8's.
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Got a 2600 when it first hit the market. ....and that was the end of my Atari experience. I did love the machine, of course. How could I not?
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@JimS
How can we forget "Computer Eyes" for the 8bit?
#6
Actually, I did forget it. Until you mentioned it. ;-) How about the speech synth that used a TI chip interfaced to the joystick ports? Built one of those.... Or how about trying to do color printing by using multiple passes with 4 different ribbons on a dot matrix printer...
... the bad ole days.....
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Actually, I did forget it. Until you mentioned it. ;-) How about the speech synth that used a TI chip interfaced to the joystick ports? Built one of those.... Or how about trying to do color printing by using multiple passes with 4 different ribbons on a dot matrix printer...
... the bad ole days.....
Okidata?
And before Yosemite evaluation board SAM, we had S.A.M. (software automated mouth) for the software end of audio.
Ah...and there was an 80 column screen through XEP80, that late hardware addition. Sadly s/w support was coming to an end for all things Atari at that point, and they never exploited it fully.
#6
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Okidata?
And before Yosemite evaluation board SAM, we had S.A.M. (software automated mouth) for the software end of audio.
Ah...and there was an 80 column screen through XEP80, that late hardware addition. Sadly s/w support was coming to an end for all things Atari at that point, and they never exploited it fully.
#6
Yep, there were a lot of things never fully exploited... it was a lot like the Amiga in that respect. Plus it got stuck with the 'game machine' stigma like Amiga.
I remember looking at the schematics for the 800 and seeing i/o decodes with the same addresses as the Apple ][... I always wondered if they planned an Apple IO card expansion unit for the 800. The parallel bus on the XL never did see much use either. Although I think the ATR80 plugged in there, but that was after I moved on to Amiga.
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Yep, there were a lot of things never fully exploited... it was a lot like the Amiga in that respect. Plus it got stuck with the 'game machine' stigma like Amiga.
I remember looking at the schematics for the 800 and seeing i/o decodes with the same addresses as the Apple ][... I always wondered if they planned an Apple IO card expansion unit for the 800. The parallel bus on the XL never did see much use either. Although I think the ATR80 plugged in there, but that was after I moved on to Amiga.
That's another thing of course. The whole thing was so open, that almost anyone who wanted to participate...could.
I still wonder if any of the Atari interrupt structure and tricks influenced Jay Miner in his future thinking about Amiga. I've never researched that.
Hmm..found a couple of interesting posts about Atari and C64 from the Jay Miner era.
http://www.ann.lu/comments2.cgi?view=1042886350&category=news
Comment #6 about 256 simultaneous colors on screen through use of display list interrupts would be similar to what we saw as "Dynamic HighRes" on the Amiga. This pretty much froze all other operations on Atari, and I recall even mouse movement on Amiga destroyed the display.
Comment #8 would indicate some early bit manipulation to extend the color palette in exchange for a speed penalty...sounds a bit like what occurred with HAM modes on Amiga.
What do you think?
#6
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I did...and still do! I had an Atari 2600 gaming system for a few years, which I sold to buy a Commodore PET 2001 (8K RAM, on-board cassette). I sold that and got an Atari 800, which I still have and it still works, believe it or not. In fact, I had the thing powered up and running as recently as 6 months ago.
It was a great computer; far better graphics than the competing Apple II series and at a lower price. Eventually I upgraded it to have 48K of RAM, two floppy disk drives and an 80-column card. I sold it to a friend, used the money to buy my Amiga 2000 and eventually bought the Atari back from the guy I sold it to. That was 15 years ago and, as I said, it continues to work to this day alongside my original A2000.
One of the main reasons I bought the Amiga was because I knew Jay Miner had gone to Commodore from Atari and a lot of the custom chips in both systems were designed by him.
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I've owned a lot of Atari computers over the years.
A 2600 with the BASIC cart ;)
400, 800, 1200XL, XEGS (I still have the GS)
520ST
Even though I mainly used my C64 in the 8bit days, I loved the Atari's too.
Same thing with the A500 and the 520ST, both great machines.
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I own a ton of 8-bits, and they are all heavily modified! :)
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Who is actually using a Falcon here? :)
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I used to have a Lynx in the early 90's.
My little handheld miggy! :)
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I'm trying to remain objective and not offend anyone:
I could never understand how the Atari people could compare their technology to the Amiga. Jack wanted an off the shelf based computer and the ST fit that requirement. However, without the many custom chips and advanced OS of the Amiga, the ST line could not compete.
I remember seeing the Amiga Boing! demo on the Atari and it took all its power to do it.
However, I wish I could talk with the actual Atari developers because I have had two questions in my mind all these years that I wish I knew the answer too...
1. Why on Earth would a company that is building a new computer go against the CPU manufacturer (Motorola, obviously) and use instructions that may not be in the next version of the chip?? If you don't know what I'm talking about, TOS uses instructions in the 68k that Motorola warned would not be in future versions (010,020,030, etc...).
Unless you rewrite or patch TOS (causing compatibility problems) you can't use a newer CPU.
This is why you could not get a MegaMidgetRacer or put in a 68010 for the Atari ST. You could get a sped up 68k but that was about it.
As a CS Professor and a developer, I cannot fathom why you would do this. I can't imagine a situation during development that going this route was the best solution.
2. Why would you have an off switch for the blitter? I mean is there a moment where you go "Boy, I wish this program would run slower so lets have the CPU do more work..."
Then you do an 030 based Atari computer with a new TOS with nice features and gut the blitter entirely so you can call it your Graphics Workstation.
I know Commodore made some really dumb mistakes too so I don't want to sound like a 'fan boy' but these are just issues that I wondered 'bout.
Cheers!
-P
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I still recall CU Amiga's "It's an Atari" statement and Amiga 500 vs Atari STE debates at school.
To answer TC's question, I haven't used an Atari computer. My first 8bit computer was a Commodore Vic-20.
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I also own a ton of 8 bitters, both the XL and XE lines.
I grew up with a 2600 (when I was 10) and always dreamt of the step up: the 800XL. I bought one when I was 12.
Moving to Amiga later on was a logical choice, I just moved along with Jay Miner's technology.
The ST could never compete, nor did I ever consider buying one, even back in the day I was still only using 8bit and pondering about my upgrade.
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@Pentad,
I'd like to see these questions answered on the ST forum over at Atari Age. Talk about religious A8/ST fanboys over there :laughing:
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I was given an ST about 14 years ago, which I found totally useless so dismantled it (I regret that now :( ). I wish I had kept it in working order now
I found a VCS 2600 in a bin about 3 years ago, that worked fine. I gave it to my youngest brother and he plays with it from time to time.
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@Pentad,
I'd like to see these questions answered on the ST forum over at Atari Age. Talk about religious A8/ST fanboys over there :laughing:
http://www.youtube.com/comment_servlet?all_comments=1&v=K4ta4OYhsEY
Running Atari's TOS on the Amiga 1000.
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Using an Atari was pretty much seen as treason amongst the kids I knew - we were all Commodore 64 and/or Amiga users, with some unlucky kids that had parents give them other weird machines that we pitied for their uncool parents rather than make fun of.
An Oric, a Spectrum (both referred to as doorstops), an Amstrad and a TI-99 was the extent of non-Commodore home computers I ever saw at other kids homes.
But the stores near where I lived did sell lots of other models. I remember playing with a Dragon at a store once around the time we got our Commodore 64. And later we saw lots of Amstrad and later Spectrum models which we sort of accepted but nobody wanted to buy. There might've been others on display but if so they didn't make an impression.
I can't remember ever seeing an 8-bit Atari (this was in Norway, btw.), but there were several Atari ST's on display for a few years in the largest local store. GEM was just too damn ugly, though - we were used to that from the 8-bits, but the Amiga spoiled us quickly and the Atari's on display were mostly ignored, while we were busy messing with the Amiga's or typing in small programs on the various 8-bits while the staff wasn't paying attention. One of the staff in my local computer store turned out to be a member of Crusaders for a while if I remember correctly (as did one of my group teachers at uni).
Never actually used an Atari properly. For me it was on the list of competing alternative home computers that we'd slag off based on specs from magazines.
Never wanted one at all, contrary to quite a few other home computers that I found fascinating but never or rarely got a chance to see (in the latter category you'll mostly find machines I was reading about "pre-Amiga" such as the Enterprise 64 for example, mostly because it seemed quite powerful from the ads and just quite different; as well as the BBC's and later Acorn machines - I've only ever seen an Archimedes once at a demo party; and reading about some of the various MSX machines was also fascinating).
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http://www.youtube.com/comment_servlet?all_comments=1&v=K4ta4OYhsEY
Running Atari's TOS on the Amiga 1000.
That feels a little bit like giving the poor girl a full frontal lobotomy...
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We had plenty 1040ST at school. I remember programing the turtle with Logo and later doing stuff with Prolog (that one was actually cool). Teacher was probably an idealistic one, but nerdy and had no chance in the course. I still remember when I just switched off an ST (the power switch was on the back side of the main unit, no PSU brick) on the opposite desk during class and the teacher was asked for help what the hell was going on and he searched and searched for that fatal error while I had to bite my lips to not ROTFL.
I somehow got an ST 1040 a few years later, but never used it much, my Amiga was always #1. One of my sisters had an ST 1040. I once played SpaceQuest on that maschine.
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@Pentad,
I'd like to see these questions answered on the ST forum over at Atari Age. Talk about religious A8/ST fanboys over there :laughing:
Let me guess.. the fact that the processor was about an inch faster? :)
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Let me guess.. the fact that the processor was about an inch faster? :)
.84mhz = 1".... yep, pretty much sums it up ;) lmao!
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Want to know more worthless trivia?
Andy Herzfeld and his team also disregarded Motorola's 'suggestion' about supervisor state in the 68k. The Mac OS puts the CPU in this mode called supervisor state that allows you to do things that you normally couldn't do in normal mode (user state I believe, its been a long time).
Anyway supervisor state is more powerful (it was really for low level debugging) but its kind of slow. I could go into technical reasons but to be blunt the CPU wasn't really meant to run in this mode all the time.
Apple went ahead and did anyway.
Jim Drew talked a great deal about why the Amiga would run the Mac OS so much faster and this is partially why. Emplant's Mac emulation was so good because Drew patch a lot of this.
The Amiga does not run in supervisor state but many Amiga utils will allow you to jump into this (an ML monitor and low level debugger). Action Replay, I'm guessing, did this and there was this crazy software util you could invoke by holding the joystick to the right while holding down both mouse buttons.
Worthless info but there you go... :-)
Cheers!
-P
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Worthless info but there you go... :-)
Cheers!
-P
Very cool worthless info though, so thanks! :)
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My first "system" was a 2600 but back in the day I never had an Atari computer. I went from the 2600 to Commodore 64, then 128, then Amiga 500, 2000, 1200, 4000.
I was back then in the mindset of the Commodore/Atari wars. Since you generally could only aford one machine you always of course considered that the best.
Later after collecting a lot of Commodore, I started looking around at the competetors from the day and while looking at Atari picked up an 800XL that was a teleprompter (with all hardware and software for this). Then the top of the 8bit line, 130XE just to have the best as a comparison against the 128. Then I picked up a 1040 STE and a 520STfm (upgraded to 1MB RAM).
So now I have Atari reresentatives alongside my Commodores. Would love a Falcon but just too expensive.
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Yeah,
I had Atari, from Atari 2600, 5200, Atari 600XL, 65XE to 130XE.
For my taste, Atari Hardware was made of better quality than Commodore (at least XL Hardware series). In thats time i was C=64/128 too (i am still user)..But the thing was Atari never had the same succes like Commodore.
About 16Bit, 32bit, 64bit Atari computers, i never had. But i know about becouse have friends they were Atari users, with ST, Mega STE, Falcon, Lynx..
For me Amiga was much better than thats machines.. for the time, many things not have comparision.
For now i still have my Atari 2600 from 1978!! Wood Front style (i had over 200 Cartridges!)
Anyway its sad nowdays not exist in the market more Brands like Atari or Commodore..
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Comment #6 about 256 simultaneous colors on screen through use of display list interrupts would be similar to what we saw as "Dynamic HighRes" on the Amiga. This pretty much froze all other operations on Atari, and I recall even mouse movement on Amiga destroyed the display.
Comment #8 would indicate some early bit manipulation to extend the color palette in exchange for a speed penalty...sounds a bit like what occurred with HAM modes on Amiga.
What do you think?
#6
It's been a long time since I looked at the Atari display... but I think you could use display list interrupts to change the color palette on each scan line... kinda like dynamic hires. I did something like it in that label printing program I mentioned. It used a hi res wysiwyg display of the label as you worked on it...but it was wider than the screen. So the custom display list changed screen mode from text to graphic mode and handled scrolling the label if needed. A little snipped of 6502 code changed the palette for the label area. If you tried that on every line, things would slow down quite a bit...
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I had an Atari 5200 back in 1979 or 1980 - kept it for about five years - There were some games that were ahead of their time.
Never thought much of the computers though - I went Commodore64, then 128, then Amiga....
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Speaking of Falcon, anybody got one they wanna give up?
Also for the note, I am pre-ordering this:
http://www.legacyengineer.com/storefront/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=39&products_id=115
If you got a 7800, then you want this badly! ;)
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Speaking of Falcon, anybody got one they wanna give up?
Also for the note, I am pre-ordering this:
http://www.legacyengineer.com/storefront/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=39&products_id=115
If you got a 7800, then you want this badly! ;)
I have a 7800, but am apparently not as into it as I should be. I have hacked an S-VHS port into it, but that is all I have done with it.
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Well, I have 2600's, a 5200, and 7800.. but never owned an Atari computer...Actually used a 1040ST before I ever used an Amiga.... I loved the ST, really. But I was kinda blown away by the miggy's graphics, and that stereo trumpet music that 'adventure const. set' played... LOL!
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Atari Falcon (http://www.qxl.no/pris/data-hardware/amiga-commodore/amiga/atari-falcon-030-sjelden/v/an622070556/) for sale on a Norwegian Internet auction. (Norwegian language)
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I never had an Atari, but my friend had an 2600 and he still have it. Every now and then when we are in the right retro gaming mood, we still play some games on it.
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Yes, and I own many today. I started with the purchase of the Atari 800 myself from paper-route money and I stayed Atari until mid 90s when I switched to Mac for business purposes. I was never into Amiga when I was younger but never thought it was a bad system either. I found both Atari and Amiga were nice but the Atari spoke to me more I guess and that is what I stayed. Earlier this year I purchased my first Amigas and they were fun to tinker with but I have found my retro heart prefers Atari so I sold them all and have been collecting my Atari systems since making a small Atari room to play in at the old age of 44. :)
I must admit comparing Amiga A1000 to the Atari 520ST of the time the Amiga was a much nicer machine in many aspects. I stuck with my Atari 800 and 8 bit until 1990 when I got married and finally moved up to the Mega 2 ST. I thought it looked much nicer than Amigas of the time and fit my needs nicely. Used the Spectre GCR by Gadgets by Small to run my Mac apps.
Then I moved to Apple mid 90s and been on them since. So, I am a Machead but still find Atari fun to collect and use as well as NeXTcubes.
Maybe when the X1000 comes out I will become more a Amiga fan but at this time, it just did not move me the way Atari or NeXT did. Maybe it was just because I was raised on Atari and you like what you had as a kid. I am sure if I ended up doing the Commodore 64 I would have went Amiga but at the time, I thought the Atari 800 was a nicer system than any other 8 bit line so that is the way my young mind took me.
tj
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he was always going on about how the Atari had better sound than the Amiga, bit of a strange kid really, but that's the closest I've got to an Atari. :)
That's the Amiga envy. I briefly owned an Atari 520 STe (Turbo Pack - Outrun was ace) which was returned within 2 months due to an intermittently faulty mouse port. In that time the main "benefits" over an Amiga 500 were that it was faster (by 0.12 mhz or something ridiculous), it had a built in MIDI port (not a better sound chip!) and had a built in transformer (no foot warmer - but I consider that to be detrimental in the British winter). Even the STe couldn't better the Amiga 500, it had nothing like a HAM mode or hardware scrolling.
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@ Brownb2
Hmm... you weren't that strange kid by any chance were you ? :roflmao:
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@ Brownb2
Hmm... you weren't that strange kid by any chance were you ? :roflmao:
I'm only strange in that I think a little bit differently (like most people on here do...). My teenage friends all owned Atari 520/1040 ST(FMs) and later SNES and Jaguars. One even had 4MB upgrade on his ST for beginner C programming. I told him he'd NEVER use all of it (£200 IIRC) - ironically I was right :) . I was in fact the odd one out by getting an Amiga 500 Plus.
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Actually I really wanted an Atari 8-bit BITD..
Had a friend down the street with an 800, which was nice.
But we could only afford a Vic-20..
I still loved that Vic-20 tho, and it sent me along the Commodore path and I never really looked back.
But, I always liked the Atari 8-bits.
I used to feel a bit like a traitor for still thinking that Atari-800 was kual, until I learned about the Jay Miner connection...
I thought the ST was nice, but the Amiga was obviously (to me) much nicer, so I stretched for my first A500...
I actually got an ST a bit ago from somewhere, but it's an Atari 520 STF.. No M.
Which I found out means I can't hook it to a TV, so it hasn't been hooked up.
Yes, I could hook it up to a VGA monitor in b/w mode, but I was looking at trying out some of the ST color games.
Oh well, it's still in the closet, and I'm OK with that...
I still might get an Atari 8-bit at some time tho.. That I would definitely use!!!
I think there's a space by the Apple IIe and the TI 99/4A downstairs..
(The Vic and C64 are upstairs next to the Amigas..) ;-)
desiv
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I thought the ST was nice, but the Amiga was obviously (to me) much nicer, so I stretched for my first A500...
I actually got an ST a bit ago from somewhere, but it's an Atari 520 STF.. No M.
Which I found out means I can't hook it to a TV, so it hasn't been hooked up.
desiv
IIRC Amiga owners looked down on STE owners, who in turn looked down on the STFM owners, who looked down on the STF owners who didn't give a rats as long as it wasn't an 8 bit since this was a serious machine requiring a monitor. :)